Wine....errr.... tasting?

The Engineer and I attended a wine tasting at the Dar Es Salaam Holiday Inn.

Wikepedia defines wine tasting as:

The sensory evaluation of wine. The colour, aroma, flavour and feel of the wine in the mouth are all assessed. The main aim of wine tasting is to assess the wine's quality.

If that's what it's actually supposed to be then I really don't know what I should call the event we went to last Saturday!

If I want to be technical about it, there was some tasting involved but only because I'm being technical. Overall, there was a whole lot more drinking,swallowing, guzzling , and in some cases, downing than mere prissy sipping and tasting!

Before you can say Carbenet Sauvignon, the wine tasting last Saturday turned into an all out wine guzzling parrrrrtaaay!

I made the rooky mistake of assuming that it would be one of those serious affairs at which the wine masters (who had traveled from South Africa) would conduct a series of talks with us wine novices (well, at least I'm a novice). We would all listen intently, absorbing every word while cautiously sipping from our glasses.

I soon realized that this scenario existed only in my head. Let's just say the absorption that was going on had nothing to do with talks....!

Since the expat community in Dar is relatively small, practically all of them were there and The Engineer and I were pleased to see almost all our friends in one place.

It was interesting to note that the normally quiet, calm people (when I say normally I mean when they haven't ingested copious amounts of wine!) turned lively and chatty while the normally excitable, talkative ones turned into Energizer Bunnies!

I must say it made for a tremendously jolly atmosphere (it was like Christmas and New Year rolled into one) and made me want to clap my hands and shout out stuff like "woo hoo" and "party on" for no reason whatsoever (come to think of it, I think I did shout that out!).

I, unfortunately, have no photographs to go with this entry but it may be for the best. Frankly, I don't think any of the pictures would have been in focus and also people might have thought that I was taking pictures to blackmail them later!

The last thing I remember thinking in relation to photography was : "I should really get my camera out"... but that was before they broke out the free flow champagne.

Let's face it, no diva worth her Prada is going to pass up on bubbly and the rest of my time there passed in a pleasant haze of champagne. I must conclude that Dar's version of wine tasting sure beats Wikipedia's any day!